The Utterly Indescribable Thing that Happened in Huggabie Falls

by Adam Cece

  Members of the nearby crowd gasped. ‘I knew I should have read that contract before I signed it,’ said Trent Thackery, who, coincidentally, wrote the book, How to Fool Nosey Children, which you may remember Felonious Dark had on his desk in the first book in the Huggabie Falls trilogy.

  Other Huggabie Falls residents were looking shocked and angry, and cross with themselves for not reading their contracts properly.

  Al Dark chuckled. ‘See, it’s over.’

  ‘Actually,’ Lemonade Limmer held up her finger, and then lowered it onto a spot on the page of the contract. ‘It says in clause eight that for clause seven to take effect, the former residents of Huggabie Falls have to be in Near Huggabie Falls.’

  Al Dark laughed. ‘Big deal? You don’t have enough time to reach the Near Huggabie Falls town limits in four and a half minutes, even if you could convince everyone to leave right now.’ Lemonade grinned. ‘Well, first we need to convince everyone to leave right now.’

  ‘How are we going to get everyone’s attention?’ Kipp said.

  Tobias looked at the giant screen. ‘If only we had a video-capture-and-projection device that could connect to that screen,’ he said.

  Kipp, Tobias, Copernicus and Lemonade turned to Cymphany.

  Cymphany saw them all staring at her. ‘What?’ she said.

  They all looked at her satchel.

  Cymphany looked annoyed. ‘Are you guys kidding me? That’s a very specific request. I don’t have every single thing in existence in my satchel. But—’ She paused and removed a small black box with a video lens in one end from her satchel. ‘I do have a video-capture-and-projection device. But that’s just an amazing coincidence.’

  She pointed the lens at Lemonade, ready to press the ‘TV Link’ button, but Lemonade put her hand up. ‘I think Kipp should do it,’ she said.

  Kipp turned to her. ‘Me?’

  ‘Kipp, it’s your turn to save the day. You’ve always been worried about being invisible. But you’ll never be truly invisible as long as you have a voice.’ Lemonade nodded at Cymphany’s video-capture-and-projection device. ‘Let’s do it.’ Kipp leapt onto the stage, Cymphany pointed the device at him and pressed the ‘TV Link’ button and suddenly Kipp’s face was on the screen, and it was twenty metres high.

  Al Dark was looking at his watch and smiling to himself. ‘This is pointless,’ he said. ‘There’s no time.’

  ‘People of Huggabie Falls,’ Kipp said, his voice booming out across Near Huggabie Falls.

  People gazed up at the glittery boy on the screen. ‘My name is Kipp Kindle. You may know me as the boy from the weirdest family in all of Huggabie Falls. There was a time’—he took a deep breath—‘when I used to be ashamed of that. Ashamed of who my family was, and of who I was.’

  More and more former residents of Huggabie Falls turned to the screen, until everyone was watching.

  ‘More than anyone,’ Kipp said. ‘I had reason to not want to live in Huggabie Falls. I wanted to live in a normal town, in a normal family. But when the extremely weird thing happened in Huggabie Falls, I realised that being weird is what makes Huggabie Falls so wonderful.’

  The former Huggabie Falls residents nodded.

  ‘Then,’ Kipp continued, ‘when the unbelievably scary thing happened in Huggabie Falls, I had to face my fear of becoming invisible. We all had to face our fears, and we all had to fight for Huggabie Falls.’

  The former Huggabie Falls residents nodded again, remembering the great battle outside the House of Spooks.

  ‘But now’—Kipp stepped forward to the edge of the stage with a look of determination, and Cymphany moved with him, keeping the device pointed at him—‘Huggabie Falls faces its greatest threat. Even after all we’ve been through, we might not appreciate the wonderful town we have. We might take it for granted, and even leave Huggabie Falls worried that we’re missing out on something better. But there is nothing better. Huggabie Falls is a place where you can be as weird as you like and still fit in. It’s a place where we all live on the same street. And it’s also the place where you can find the most amazing friends.’

  ‘Oh, Kipp,’ Cymphany said, sniffling.

  ‘Okay, Kindle.’ Tobias blushed. ‘Don’t embarrass us.’

  ‘I haven’t always appreciated my friends,’ Kipp said, giving Tobias and Cymphany a tiny apologetic smile, and they knew he was thinking of the argument they’d had in the Under. ‘But I do now, and I always will from now on. And I will always appreciate Huggabie Falls. I’ll never take it for granted again. A new friend told me he thinks Huggabie Falls could be the centre of the universe.’ Kipp grinned at Copernicus.

  Copernicus put his hooves up. ‘It’s just a theory. I’ve been wrong before,’ he said.

  Kipp turned back to the crowd. ‘All I know is it’s the centre of my universe. And I’ll never let anyone take away what makes Huggabie Falls special, or scare me out of town, or convince me to leave by making me think I’m missing out on something better. And I don’t think any of you ever should either.’

  ‘Kipp’s right,’ shouted tiny, timid Henrietta Humpling, who for such a small girl had a big voice all of a sudden. ‘Everyone should listen to Kipp. What are we all doing here in Near Huggabie Falls, when we should be in Huggabie Falls? I might be one-third werewolf, one-third vampire and one-third Dutch, but I am all Huggabie Falls. Now, let’s go home.’

  ‘Yes.’ Kipp gave a thumbs-up to Henrietta. ‘Let’s go home.’

  The crowd cheered in agreement and a chant went up. ‘Hugg-a-bie Falls! Hugg-a-bie Falls! Hugg-a-bie Falls!’

  And people started leaving their lines for the various Near Huggabie Falls attractions, even though those attractions were only four minutes from opening, and they began walking back down the main street of Near Huggabie Falls, back towards Huggabie Falls—their home.

  Cymphany took her finger off the TV Link button. ‘That was wonderful, Kipp,’ she said.

  Tobias nodded. ‘Totally brilliant, Kindle.’

  Lemonade shared a look with Copernicus and grinned at the hugging trio of Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany. ‘That’ll do,’ Lemonade said. ‘That’ll do nicely.’

  But Al Dark was doing a slow clap. Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany released their hug.

  ‘Oh, that was wonderful,’ snarled Al Dark, stopping his clap. ‘That was beautiful.’ He held up his watch and tapped the front of it. ‘But it still doesn’t matter. No one is going back to Huggabie Falls whether they want to or not, because in three and a half minutes, all these chanting simpletons will still be within the Near Huggabie Falls town limits, and their contracts will take affect. Unless you have a high-speed train, the Near Huggabie Falls town limits are way more than three and a half minutes’ walk away. Incidentally, Near Huggabie Falls has a world’s fastest and best high-speed train, but it’s made out of paper and sticky tape. So your big speech was for nothing.’

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany looked at each other, concerned. Al Dark was right. It was quite a long way back to the Near Huggabie Falls town limits.

  But Lemonade didn’t look worried. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘the people of Huggabie Falls could reach the Near Huggabie Falls town limits in three and a half minutes. All they need is the right motivation. Like say, for example, if all these fake attractions started collapsing.’

  ‘That is not going to happen,’ said Al Dark. ‘All the fake frontages are held in place by support ropes, which I tied myself.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Copernicus, who had the cutest and guiltiest expression on his face. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Before I disguised myself as Tobias, I may or may not have been chewing on some of those support ropes.’

  It was at that exact moment that the fake frontage of the Near Huggabie Falls World’s Best Cinema Complex started to topple. The people walking along the street threw themselves out of the way as the cardboard frontage crashed to the ground. Miraculously, no one was flattened, but terrified former Huggabie Falls residents picked themselves up and saw
that the collapsed cardboard had revealed: the real Near Huggabie Falls cinema complex, or, to be more precise, one room with one broken television and one largely empty popcorn box.

  But no one had time to process what they were seeing, as the fake cinema complex frontage wasn’t the only thing that was falling—all the fake Near Huggabie Falls attractions and buildings started to sway and topple, bashing into each other, and giant blocks of construction cardboard, some as big as cars, or even bigger, fell onto the road.

  The former Huggabie Falls residents suddenly began screaming and running towards Huggabie Falls.

  Cymphany spun around to see Lemonade and Copernicus high-fiving each other. ‘Lemonade! Copernicus!’ Cymphany yelled. ‘Are you crazy? These collapsing cardboard fake attractions are going to flatten us all.’

  ‘No one is going to get hurt, Cymphany,’ Lemonade yawned, and she casually popped the contracts into Cymphany’s satchel. ‘I’m a time traveller. It’s taken me and Copernicus 5809 goes to get the timing exactly right, but I think we’ve finally got it. Now, if you, Kipp and Tobias wouldn’t mind taking one step to the right, immediately, please.’

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany took one step to the right, and a second later a piece of fake attraction the size of a bus crashed into the ground where they had just been standing.

  ‘Lemonade,’ Kipp gasped. ‘You just saved our lives.’

  ‘Pay attention,’ Lemonade said, calm and smiling, ‘because I’m going to save it eight more times in the next three minutes. Now, Cymphany, put me on the screen please.’

  Cymphany raised the video-capture-and-projection device again, pointed it at Lemonade and hit the TV Link button. Lemonade’s face appeared on the screen.

  ‘People of Huggabie Falls,’ she said, forcefully enough to cut through the chaos in the main street. ‘The city of Near Huggabie Falls, or to be more accurate, the fake city of Near Huggabie Falls, is collapsing all around us, and under any normal circumstances we would all be flattened. But lucky for all of you, I am a time traveller, so follow me, run fast and do exactly as I say, and we will all get out of here alive.’ She motioned to Cymphany to cut the TV link and then she turned to Al Dark. ‘And that applies to you too, Mr Dark. Take one step backwards please, right now!’

  Al Dark hopped backwards and a fake stone head the size of a hot-air balloon, freshly detached from an enormous statue of himself, hit the ground millimetres in front of him, so close that it left a grey smudge on the end of his nose.

  Al Dark went white. He didn’t need any more convincing. He was going to listen to exactly what Lemonade Limmer said from then on, and so was everyone else.

  ‘Okay, everybody’—Lemonade Limmer cupped her hands either side of her mouth and yelled, as she was no longer being projected onto the giant television screen—‘onto the right-hand side of the road, running east. Let’s go. I repeat, right-hand side of the road.’

  The whole crowd swept to the right-hand side of the street and started running, including Huggabie Falls science teacher, Mr Dungolly, who initially began to run to the other side but switched, and it was a good thing too because the colossal frontage of the Near Huggabie Falls World’s Best Medical Centre collapsed onto the left-hand side of the road, causing everyone to scream and be very, very happy they weren’t under it. Mr Dungolly gulped. ‘I’ve really got to learn my lefts from my rights,’ he said to himself as he kept running.

  With the Near Huggabie Falls World’s Best Medical Centre’s fake frontage fallen away, the real medical centre behind was exposed. It was one room with no medical equipment or any medicines, or even a hospital bed in it, but only a ‘Get well soon’ card on a small table.

  ‘Now,’ Lemonade called as she ran, ‘everyone keep running, but cross back to the left-hand side of the road, in 3-2-1, go!’

  They all crossed to the left-hand side of the road, even Mr Dungolly, in the nick of time, as the teetering frontage of the Near Huggabie Falls World’s Best Sports Stadium flattened the right-hand side of the road. The real Near Huggabie Falls sports stadium was revealed. It was a tennis racquet with no strings and a swimming pool that wasn’t so much a swimming pool as a bucket of water with the words ‘Swimming Pool’ written on it.

  ‘I’ve been lining up for nine hours to get into that pool,’ Gilly Ganderface hollered indignantly. ‘I bought new floaties and everything.’

  ‘Everyone, stop running and stand still,’ Lemonade shouted, ‘in 3-2-1, freeze!’

  They all stopped running at the exact same moment as the Near Huggabie Falls World’s Best Hotel collapsed across the entire road. The tremendous fake frontage crashed and instantly turned into a pile of road-blocking, jagged cardboard. ‘Now keep going,’ Lemonade yelled, turning her head left and right. ‘Climb over the rubble. And Conrad Creeps, do up your shoelaces, otherwise you’ll trip over and get crushed.’

  Conrad Creeps, who was a Huggabie Falls resident who was scared of everything, did as Lemonade commanded, even though he was scared of doing up shoelaces. He was also scared of getting crushed—although that fear isn’t so weird, as most people are scared of getting crushed.

  Cymphany scrambled up the mound of rubble and held out her hand to help Tobias. ‘Can you believe this?’ Tobias said, as he and Cymphany scampered down the other side. ‘We’re being directed through a hailstorm of falling rubble, by our time-travelling classmate.’

  Kipp ran down a pile of rubble and joined Cymphany and Tobias, and they all kept running. ‘After all the adventures we’ve had,’ Kipp panted, ‘I can believe anything.’

  Once all the fleeing Huggabie Falls residents had climbed over the rubble, with Lemonade directing them to move left or right to avoid giant falling clocks, or flying desks, or chairs, or, at one time, a car made of icy-pole sticks, the crowd kept running. Lemonade kept directing. She always knew exactly which sides of the road were going to get flattened and when. And she warned everyone not to stop out the front of the Near Huggabie Falls World’s Best Doughnut Shop, right before a giant movie-screen-sized plastic model of a doughnut fell onto the road and started rolling down it, which meant Lemonade had to direct people to dive left or right at exactly the right moment to avoid getting squashed by the huge, rolling doughnut or more falling debris, or both.

  ‘I’m so hungry,’ Tobias said, watching the doughnut roll towards the horizon, as he, Kipp and Cymphany ran.

  In all this chaos Lemonade was perfectly calm and relaxed, calling out directions and keeping everyone safe, until they were outside the Near Huggabie Falls town limits.

  Everyone turned and caught their breath and watched as the fake city of Near Huggabie Falls finally completely fell in on itself.

  Cymphany took a giant breath. ‘We made it. We survived,’ she said.

  Tobias’s stomach rumbled.

  Lemonade motioned to Webber Warbleton, who held up the three-minute egg-timer he’d flipped over at the start of all this, and as the final bit of sand leaked from the top hemisphere into the bottom hemisphere, a thunderous cheer erupted. Lemonade had been correct—with the right motivation, which in this case was a fake city collapsing all around them and threatening to crush them at any second, they’d all run fast enough to make it past the Near Huggabie Falls town limits in less than three minutes.

  Lemonade turned to Al Dark, who was hunched over and sucking up huge lungfuls of air. ‘I believe,’ she said smugly, ‘that now makes these contracts’—she pulled the contracts out of Cymphany’s satchel—‘null and void.’

  She turned to the crowd and held the contracts high. ‘Everyone is free to return to Huggabie Falls.’

  The crowd cheered again.

  ‘And to celebrate,’ Mrs Turgan said, ‘I’m going to turn everyone into lentils as soon as we get back.’

  The cheering in the crowd subsided.

  ‘Just kidding,’ Mrs Turgan said, and the cheer commenced again. ‘Might make it avocados instead,’ she whispered under her breath.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany hugged
each other, for what felt like the millionth time today, and then they pulled Copernicus into the group hug, despite his protests that they had better not mess up his hair.

  ‘That was amazing, Lemonade,’ Cymphany said. ‘You are incredible.’

  Lemonade raised an eyebrow. ‘No, not incredible, Cymphany. It’s just time travel. You get used to it after a while.’ She took one step to the left and a glob of pigeon poo landed on the ground where she had just been standing. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ she said, pulling her purple fingertipless gloves on. ‘I must be off. See you later, Copernicus.’

  Copernicus was doing a victory dance with Tobias and Kipp—Copernicus, naturally, was a world-class dancer. He stopped and gave Lemonade a wave back.

  Lemonade pulled her aviator goggles over her eyes. ‘You know,’ she said to Cymphany, motioning to the goggles. ‘I don’t even need these. But how cool do they look?’ And then she casually walked away, like she hadn’t just saved hundreds of people’s lives, and like this was just a normal everyday occurrence for her, which, Cymphany guessed, it probably was.

  Al Dark, who had caught his breath now, shoved happy people out of the way as he stormed over to Cymphany, Kipp and Tobias.

  ‘You might think it’s over,’ he snarled. ‘But you won’t defeat me as easily as you defeated my two brothers next time. I’ll be back again and, eventually, one day, I will be the most important and the most noticed evil identical triplet Dark brother. Trust me, you will never forget the name Al.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Mr Treachery turning around. ‘Who’s Al?’

  ‘It’s me,’ Al Dark yelled. ‘Me, me, me.’ He jumped up and down on the spot. ‘It’s me, for crying out loud. Why is it so hard for anyone to remember me?’ He clenched his teeth. ‘I’ll make you all remember me, mark my words, when I do something momentously evil.’

  It was Al Dark’s big super-villain moment, and he was doing quite a good job of it. The only person who wasn’t intimidated was Kipp.